SA transport company helps students appreciate industry-wide changes

25 August 2017

On the ground’
instruction provided by owners of disruptive business model

Disruption
is the name of the game in business today and some South African students are
learning first-hand what it is all about. As part of guiding the next
generation of transport and logistics professionals,
Linebooker – South Africa’s leading online bidding platform for road freight
transport – has been instructing students from
Stellenbosch University to ensure change management is top-of-mind as
industries transform at a rapid rate.

Nick
Hoffman, GM at Linebooker, believes it’s imperative to equip young people with
the practical and experiential learning necessary to conceive pioneering ideas.
“In order to stay ahead of the curve, students of today need to have a
perspective of business that extends beyond the classroom. Business models that
may have worked in the past are now being disrupted as technologies are
introduced.”

A
leading online transport business, Linebooker helped guide students in
reimagining the transport industry in the 21st century. Inspiring university
students to devise smart solutions to sustainably evolve the sector, the online
transport business is using its ‘on the ground’ experience to impart learnings
from its business to the next generation. As part of these efforts, last
week the company spent time lecturing more than 40 Logistics and Transport
Economics honours students and post-graduate diploma students at Stellenbosch
University. Earlier this year, the company hosted a team of Stellenbosch
MBA students to assess their business, a tech start-up.

“The
transport and logistics sector is evolving at an unprecedented rate, and as
educators and researchers, we need to ensure students are kept abreast of
changing business models and the impacts of new technologies,” noted Anneke de
Bod, lecturer at Stellenbosch University and co-author of the Logistics
Barometer, the most comprehensive national study of trends in logistics
costs in South Africa*. “We’re trying to teach future leaders and professionals
in the industry to be adaptable, especially in our technology-driven
environment.”

As
part of its model, Linebooker does not own any trucks, but rather matches
transport customers with transport providers via a mobile-friendly online
bidding platform. Offering a more efficient system that saves transport
customers an average of 13% while guaranteeing transporters payment within 15
days, the company provides end-to-end execution on road freight transportation.
Since launching in early 2017, their online bidding platform has amassed over
106 transporters with a collective fleet of more than 3,200 vehicles.

Hoffman
concludes, “By working with tomorrow’s transport and logistics leaders, we hope
to inspire the next generation to think laterally, use information smartly and
to integrate technology as a means to turn big ideas into high-impact solutions
for the industry at large.”

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